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Near Life Experience Day of Silver Sun (with Bonus Interview!) By Larry Petro, News Monkey Friday, June 6, 2003 @ 1:25 PM
STEVE: Well, My brother and I had always wanted to do some sort of musical project together and when Lillian took a break in the ‘90s, we got together to form Near Life Experience. In Lillian Axe I wrote material that fit the style of what the band was all about and you wanted to impress everybody. With Near Life it was like, you know what, we have much the same taste and what we like is what we’re gonna be playing when we’re out there. We don’t have to please a lot of people. There were a lot of avenues that we took that we weren’t able to take in other situations. It’s not that it’s good, bad, worse or better, it’s just different. And so we decided to put this thing together and we were actually together looking for the right people for maybe a year or so before we found the people that we wanted to do this with. We’ve had a few member changes since then, but it was really the opportunity for me to be able to play stuff that was the edge, the perimeter of what I had inside of my heart. KNAC.COM: Well, it’s interesting that you mention writing songs to please other people or to fit a specific ‘mold’ if you will. One of the things that struck me when I was listening to the CD the first few times was that you must have been writing for a particular style in Lillian Axe. STEVE: Well, I don’t wanna take that too far because that isn’t really quite the way it is. It’s just that when you’re writing in certain situations, you know, it’s like I couldn’t have written an 8 minute song for the last Lillian Axe album that was really dark and deep and please everyone in the band, labels, radio people. I didn’t compromise my writing but I didn’t take certain things that I like to do and present them. I took a certain element of myself and presented that I’ve never, ever sold myself short and I’ve never written anything and presented it if I wasn’t happy about it. With Near Life I’m able to explore lots of other different things. I also have a solo record I’m working on now that will be WAY different than any of these bands that I play in. I have the opportunity in this band for me to hit those deep, dark places I haven’t gone before. KNAC.COM: Now, my other thought aside from the writing for a style was that Psychoschizophrenia came out in ’93, and since most people’s musical styles evolve over time, then if your influences on the next Lillian record are like Day of Silver Sun, then it’s going to be pretty heavy. STEVE: Well, that’s we’re heading with it right now. We have a brand new song for the Lillian album and some people are like, you know, that sounds like a Near Life song. But the chemistry between the individuals in each of the projects is what will make a song fit that particular style. I think there are a lot of Lillian songs that Near Life could’ve done and vice versa. They’re two totally different animals and I prefer to keep it that way. They’ve both played on the same stage before and it’s worked out well. You know, to me, music is music and I like mixes of different styles. If every band sounded like the next one we would have a pretty boring world, even though that seems to be what’s presented on radio most of the time is a constant, singular theme through every song you hear. The world listens to radio to find out what’s in the marketplace and are not allowed to hear so many things that are just wonderful. KNAC.COM: Now Day of Silver Sun is the band’s fourth or fifth CD, is that right? STEVE: No, it’s actually really our second CD. We did a self-titled album about 4 years ago, something like that, and basically we just sold it at live shows, we didn’t get any distribution so we just sold it at live shows and on the internet. We released Day of Silver Sun about 5 months ago, and the problem we had with that was Southwest Distribution, who was distributing the record nationwide, went bankrupt. So basically, we have a brand new record that hasn’t hit the market. It has been out there in a few stores around and it’s sold a few thousand units so far but it’s not getting the push. So basically we’re back to getting this thing out. It’s still at Amazon, Best Buy and some of the other record sites on the Internet, at live shows and that kind of thing, so you can get it if you try. We’re shopping it right now trying to get it picked up. KNAC.COM: Well, what was the band’s mindset during the recording of Day of Silver Sun? STEVE: Well, it’s done in a lot of segments. Half the record was done with my brother Craig playing drums and the other half is done with Dennis (Papaleo). You know we’ve got a lot of songs where Bob Dearden played rhythm guitar, he was the first guitar player before Sam (Poitevant), and the other half was Sam. It’s almost like two different bands played on the record. Four or five songs were from the first incarnation, and the other ones are the band as it is now and has been for the past 3 years. KNAC.COM: So you actually used some songs that you had? STEVE: Yeah, some we had and just remixed them. KNAC.COM: Was there some sort of theme or special sound that you were looking for on this CD, because it seems almost like an astral journey or some kind of transcendental theme going on throughout the record. STEVE: It’s kind of a theme over, well the first song “Mother” is about actual birth, you know, through the birth canal and out into the world, the whole awakening of being nothing into awareness, growing into awareness. As the record goes on there is kind of a theme to it, a different awareness to life and situations in life, from optimism to pessimism. I’m a pretty pessimistic guy when it comes to the whole world and the ugliness out there but by the same token I’m equally optimistic about the beauty, I just get aggravated how people don’t take advantage of it and we hurt each other so much. KNAC.COM: Any songs that stand out to you as being favorites? STEVE: Ahh, to be honest with you, no I don’t. I have no favorites on the record. There are some songs that I really like listening to or playing live more than other ones. I like the newer stuff because the fresher the song is, the more excited you get about playing it. Some of the songs I’ve been playing for several years, but they have all turned out real well and I’m excited about ‘em. Maybe “Eden” might be one of my favorites on the record. That one was inspired by a dream where I was this kind of, I don’t know, I’m not going to use the word ‘cult,’ but this kind of… [laughs] You see when you use the word ‘cult’ you suddenly think of all the bad things. I was this leader of a group of people that were trying to go and start a new place to live somewhere to get away from all the ugliness on the earth and it took place in this big, wide open Midwestern field covered in snow and I had this whole group of people and that’s why I called it “Eden,” like the start or rebirth of a new world. We were in this house with a bunch of upper class, snotty-nosed rich people that were sitting in a room, they didn’t know us but they were judging us and we snubbed our noses at them and left to go through this field to start this new world. KNAC.COM: And this was all a dream? STEVE: Yeah, it was all only a dream. I was like, “Where did this come from?” KNAC.COM: Okay, last question. Tell me about the little passages that are written at the end of each set of lyrics in the CD booklet. STEVE: Well, when I did the Psychoschizophrenia liner notes, I did something similar to that and I got great response and people really enjoyed the fact that I touched on things a little bit but I didn’t give too much of it away. I always thought that, I really enjoyed hearing a writer’s touch on what something was about to the point where you could still make your own inferences from it but you didn’t really, it wasn’t really about any one particular moment or thing and you could draw your own conclusions and have something that was multi-interpreted. And so I just kind of touched on things a little bit, like ideas that I had when I was writing the lyrics because to be honest with you, it’s really difficult when people say ‘well, what is this song about,’ it’s hard for me to say sometimes because in most cases the lyrics just come out when I start to listen back to the music. I’ll have melody lines in my head and when I write music I write a piece that moves me musically and then I let that kind of give birth to the words. That’s usually what happens. For instance, Day of Silver Sun, my brother actually came up with that title. He said, “Man, wouldn’t it be cool if one day we woke up and everything had changed and the sun was silver and the whole way we looked at things was different than we had ever experienced before,” and I started envisioning Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and being in the future on a planet where we lost all individuality and everything was all barren and cold and stiff and having no color but just silver everywhere. You know, all these ideas about losing individuality but also a futuristic look at what it could get like if we don’t appreciate it. KNAC.COM: I liked the idea of the passages. I thought they kind of summarized the songs. STEVE: It was enough idea to give you some thought about it as you listen to it. People have always told me, “You know, you’re lyrics are very poetic,” but to me they’re nothing without the music. I’ve always felt that it must be tough for a poet to come up with ideas that can move somebody strictly by the words. That’s why I admire good poetry. But when you can take great poetry and place it over the top of music, that’s why I guess I love soundtracks to movies so much is because movies can be made or broken by the soundtrack at times. A piece of music can take a simple sentence and make it have 500 different meanings depending on the piece of music behind it. Music and lyrics together if they’re done right are one of the most moving possibilities, then you just add the visuals to it and it’s all over. I always wanted to do a video that was just different scenes and scenarios and visuals set to music in the background and I’ve thought that would be an awesome thing to do with our music some day. In closing, I would like to say that this is a well-produced CD and is worthy of checking out. But hey, don't take my word for it. Got to the Noiselab Records web site and download a couple of clips from Day Of Silver Sun and see if you don't agree. Check them out at: NLEweb.com. * * * *
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The other day I had a Near Life Experience. No, I'm not talking about a near DEATH experience where you see a bright white light beckoning you on. I'm talking about Near LIFE Experience, side project of Lillian Axe guitarist and master musician Steve Blaze.